Research

Starting In the 1990s, multinational corporations introduced surface mining techniques in Latin America, which carry significant environmental and health risks. Some communities formed grassroots assemblies to resist projects, and many of these have successfully stopped or delayed “mega-mines.” Yet, these victories can be short-lived. Corporations can shore up their resources and return once local effervescence dies down. This makes persistence extremely vital for these grassroots communities.

Existing scholarship suggests that social movements are more likely to endure when they are formal, bureaucratic, and rigid in their rules. Yet, some of these grassroots anti-mining assemblies have survived 20 years or more, without becoming hierarchical. Thus, my dissertation asks precisely this: how and why are grassroots movements able to persist over time? And how do short-term successes factor into long-term resilience? To explore these questions, I conducted a qualitative comparative study of four different Argentine communities along the Andes, whose anti-mining assemblies vary in terms of success and persistence. Across these fields, I triangulated methods, completing 120 interviews with activists, over 18 months of participant observation, and archival research on newspaper articles, social media posts, and other relevant records.

From this data, I argue that persistence can, in fact, come from fluidity. I found that these self-identified water defenders often invoked metaphors of that which they seek to protect: water. Leaning into these language choices, I lay out the dynamics of what I call “fluid power.” Thus, I explore how the anti-mining movement practices fluid activism from the individual “water drop” to the assembly “body of water” to the network “water system.” At each of these levels, I translate this metaphorical language into concrete practices. Individual participants “flow” in and out of participating; they also change their identities and positions according to the needs of the moment. Instead of rigid rules, organizations rotate responsibilities and allow decisions to be made in the moment. Instead of top-down recruitment campaigns, they bring in the next generation of “water drops” through socialization efforts in everyday arenas. Lastly, as they scale up, they connect to other bodies of water without losing their horizontal character. Building fluid power is not without its challenges though; water is fluid paradoxically because of its tension, after all. At every level, participants must work to remain fluid, and, at times, this can involve reproducing inequalities or making sacrifices for unity. Moreover, external factors can make it harder to flow: changes in government, economic downturns, repression, and so on all represent challenges that the movement must face to avoid stagnation.

In sum, I argue that, in part, this fluidity works because it intertwines activism with everyday life in a way that makes it more sustainable – and life-sustaining. In this sense, their goal is not simply to stop mega-mining projects; rather, it is to consolidate long-lasting power to keep up the fight against corporations with seemingly unlimited resources. As such, this project calls for shifting the focus from short-term outcomes to long-term persistence when understanding a movement’s impact. In doing so, I argue that we must account for the interplay among time, place, and strategy. From this dissertation study I currently have two articles under review, at Qualitative Sociology and the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, respectively.

As a graduate research assistant for Dr. Pamela Paxton, I have worked on several multi-method projects on non-profits, which utilize tax records to construct a comprehensive dataset of organizations in the United States. The first project focuses on nonprofits working in the addiction space. In particular, I helped design the interview guide and protocol, carrying out 30 interviews with organizational leaders. We have a paper in progress that puts this qualitative data in conversation with results from topic modeling to examine how addiction nonprofits invoke moral language in justifying their programming choices.

Our second project is on environmental nonprofits. I conducted 29 interviews with executive directors of organizations in this sector, asking about programming, mission statements, and relationships with external stakeholders. From this data, we have a paper in progress on the strategies of local nonprofits with respect to climate communication.

I participate in a collaborative ethnographic project on persistent grassroots initiatives in Latin America, directed by Dr. Javier Auyero. This team brings together researchers doing embedded ethnographic fieldwork in several different countries. Across these different contexts, each has a story of a community organization that has persisted over time. These initiatives were often borne out of moments of mass, visible contention; long after these protest events died down, these organizations continued to work day in and day out. Though they rarely make the headlines themselves, they are remarkable in their enduring commitment to make everyday life better for those in their communities.

The research team has produced several different types of scholarship. Together with Dr. Auyero, we co-authored a review article for Public Books that establishes the theoretical framework used for the collaborative project; and with one additional co-author, we put these concepts into use, analyzing the empirical case of a soup kitchen in Buenos Aires, for an article in the Journal of Latin American Studies.

We have also been experimenting with narrative form and nonfiction writing. We partnered with the Revista Anfibia, an outlet for academics to write narrative journalism for the broader public, housed in the National University of San Martin of Argentina. Together with their team, we have written essays about eight cases of enduring collective action, combining literary elements, fieldwork, and sociological insights. My piece – “La Leyenda del Algarrobo Caminante” / “The Legend of the Walking Algarrobo Tree” – focuses on the anti-mining assembly El Algarrobo in Andalgalá, whose ritual of walking around the plaza every single Saturday since 2009 has prevented more mega-mines from opening in the region. We are currently in the process of compiling an edited volume of these case studies to share with English-speaking audiences.

Some social movements persist over time. Others are short lived. We suggest that the former suggest focused attention. We came to an interest in the issue of social movement endurance when the two of us discussed our respective work, on movements in Tunisia and in Argentina. We realized that, despite the obvious differences between our research sites, we were considering a similar puzzle about what allowed a social movement to persist over the long run. We organized a one-day mini conference at UT Austin in April 2025 and a special session at ASA 2025, both on the theme of “Enduring Social Movements.” We are now preparing an edited volume on the same topic. Across these initiatives, we have been raising questions about social movement persistence. Rather than looking at short-term wins or losses, we explore a movement’s ability to mobilize over the long run. We aim to move inquiry to the consideration of issues that are central to the development and potential effectiveness of social movements and collective organizing in relation to their outcomes and impacts over time.

The Mapping Resistance project is a digital interactive map and a geodataset of community responses to mining projects in Argentina. Since the 1990s, new “mega-mining” techniques and increasing demand for minerals has led to foreign investment and local resistance throughout Latin America. While many communities in Argentina have organized to stop mines and protect water, mobilization for environmental rights has not been universal. Thus, to display and analyze community responses, we used QGIS to digitize and georeference the geological map of Argentina in the UT Geology Library. We then overlaid this map with geospatial data on affected communities from 4 sources: 1.) geological and mining maps of Argentine provinces from the UT collection; 2.) datasets on mega-mining projects from the Argentine government; 3.) census data on sociodemographic characteristics of nearby communities; and 4.) a dataset of our creation that documents collective action in these places. The resulting geodataset has information on 187 mining projects and 463 localities located in close proximity to them. To create this geodataset I collaborated with Cristina Agüero, a member of the No to the Mine assembly of Esquel. This dataset was developed with support from the UT Libraries Map & Geospatial Collections Explorer (MGCE) Fellowship. The data can be accessed in the Texas Data Respository as well as UT’s Geodata Portal.